NY Times Editor Admits to Bias in Project Veritas Video

by Brian McNicollon October 17, 2017

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Project Veritas published a new video Thursday in which a New York Times editor based in London confirms what most readers already knew: The paper has essentially given up on objectivity as long as President Trump is around.

Editor Des Shoe admitted the paper had gone all-Trump-all-the-time during the 2016 campaign in an attempt to undermine him.

“I think one of the things that maybe journalists were thinking about is like … Oh, if we write about him, about how insanely crazy he is and how ludicrous his policies are, then maybe people will read it and be like, oh, wow, we shouldn’t vote for him,” Shoe said on the video.

She also said there didn’t seem to be any alternative.

“Our main stories are supposed to be objective,” she said in a comment on coverage of the Charlottesville riots. “It’s very difficult in this day and age to do that. It’s hard to portray, for instance the president, in an unbiased light when the words that are coming out of his mouth are apologetic to white supremacists.”

Shoe also suggested that at least part of the reason for the rapid-fire onslaught was economic. Readers demand dirt on Trump, and the paper seeks to deliver, no matter what that does to its reputation.

Competitors such as the Washington Post and other “people who have paywalls up,” force a daily race for clicks.

“This is what I was trying to say, is like, the last couple years, it’s changed for the bad,” Shoe said in the video. “I think the business model itself is just … there’s so much panic about what to do that, you know, what else is a company supposed to do? That’s the conundrum … is that a business model, in this time, is built on what the readers what.”

The paper’s subscriptions have “skyrocketed” since Trump won the election. “I mean, they call it the Trump bump,” she said.

But she admitted it is not all that hard to convince her to attack the president every day for a living. “I feel like Trump is … is just a … is sort of an idiot in a lot of ways. Just an oblivious idiot,” she said.